There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. – Oscar Wilde

Over the past seven months more and more readers have discovered my blog, and the many visits and many links from the websites and Twitter accounts of those who enjoy my essays have made The Honest Courtesan that much easier to find on Google for those looking for information on prostitution and the lives and thoughts of whores. And that’s a good thing not just for my vanity but also for all sex workers, because every source which presents real information instead of the ugly propaganda spread by the prohibitionists increases our chances of being heard by those in the general public who otherwise might not ever find the truth. In the past few weeks, I’ve been contacted by three different Dallas-area reporters who discovered my column of November 23rd and decided to consult me about the myth of 10,000 hookers invading Dallas for the Super Bowl. One of these reporters emailed me a bit too late to make his deadline, but I gave telephone interviews to the other two and found both of them intelligent, inquisitive men who were genuinely interested at getting at the truth rather than simply transcribing press releases from special-interest groups.

Jason Whitely of WFAA-TV in Dallas contacted me on January 12th and interviewed me the next day; though the telephone interview wasn’t used in the final story, I pointed him to the links which appeared in Tuesday’s column (the ones debunking the World Cup and Olympics hysteria). The report aired on television Monday night and can be seen on the station’s website. Then last Friday (January 28th) I spoke with Pete Kotz of Village Voice Media; his article appears in this week’s free Dallas Observer newspaper and is also online at the Observer’s website. I gave him the same links I had given to Mr. Whitely and he also did a lot of independent research himself for the article, so it’s well worth reading both for the information and the joy of seeing another thinking person who recognizes nonsense when he sees it. My favorite part:

This isn’t to say that the sex trade isn’t alive and well. It is. Nor is it to imply there are no such thing as teen prostitutes. There are. The problem is that most of what we believe remains fixed in a blaxploitation film from 1973, where menacing pimps named Lester beat their weeping charges with diamond-encrusted canes.

Ask Maggie McNeill.

That’s not her real name. It’s the pen name she uses on her website, The Honest Courtesan, where she dispenses wisdom on all things hooker. She ran an escort service in New Orleans for six years, supplying ladies for the 2002 Super Bowl. As she sees it, almost all we believe about the industry is fallacy.

That, and the part about whores’ super invisible powers. He also independently discovered the Schapiro Group’s report and came to pretty much the same conclusions as we did.

But on Monday good luck came, as the superstition tells us it does, in threes. The news articles appeared in the evening, but in the morning my column “Numerology” was featured in the “Morning Links” section of The Agitator, generating the best day I’ve had yet: 3486 views, of which 934 came directly from The Agitator and hundreds of others from references, retweets and the like. My favorite headline from all of these was the one used by Econjeff: “Former prostitute out-researches CNN…and does so in only 90 minutes.”

In the same morning, I received an invitation from regular reader Kelly Michaels to appear in her Nymphtalk Live podcast that evening; I of course jumped at the chance and so my readers can now enjoy the dubious pleasure of listening to me talking about my favorite subject with Kelly for the last 90 minutes of a two-hour podcast (the program opens with a five-minute sexual fantasy and the next half hour is on Tantric masturbation, which I’m sure my readers will find interesting as well). And though I’m not exactly in love with the sound of my own voice when it isn’t resonating in my own skull cavities, I hope to hear it a lot more often in the future because that will mean I’m getting the word out, telling people the truth about whoring and answering the trafficking fetishists and the Amber Lyons and the Annie Loberts and, if I ever get as brave as Laura Agustín, maybe even the Mira Sorvinos.

Whorish Media

Maggie on Twitter

Boring but necessary legal stuff

All original content on this website (i.e. all of my columns, pages and anything else which I write myself) is protected under international copyright law as of the time it is posted; though you may link to it as you please or quote passages (as long as you attribute the quote to me), please do not reproduce whole columns without my express written permission. In other words, you have to say "pretty please with sugar on top" first, and then wait for me to say "okey-dokey".